勢 - Dong Chinese dictionary

shì

power

Phonosemantic compound. 力 represents the meaning and 埶 represents the sound.

Components

力 Meaning component

lì

power

埶 Sound component

yì

art, skill

勢 and 埶 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.勢 /*ŋ̊et-s/
埶 /*ŋ̊et-s/, /*ŋet-s (MC I!)/

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

势 (勢)

shì

power, force; tendency; power; influence; potential; momentum; trend; situation; conditions; outward appearance; sign; gesture; male genitals

Most common words with 勢

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	优势	superiority
	姿势	posture
	势	power
	形势	circumstances
	趋势	trend

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*ŋ̊et-s	syejH	shì	circumstances, setting

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 35.9923% of movies

1037th most common character in movies

506th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	13
Simplified	势
Unicode	U+52E2
Shuowen	《說文新附》：“勢，盛力，權也。从力，埶聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Word

Meaning